Rouleurs, Sprinters, and Climbers

The past week was, for me, relatively low-volume but with a much-needed high-intensity weekend. It was also another week for flat tires, one of which was mine. After a pretty normal Mellow Monday ride, things went South weather-wise and Tuesday morning's ride was rained out. On Wednesday there was a Northwest wind that was at least strong enough to split the WeMoRi group on its return trip from the Seabrook end of Lakeshore Drive. I got out there at my usual time and, also as usual rode a bit on Lakeshore Drive looking for the telltale cluster of flashing white lights to the east. As they approached I turned onto Marconi and waited to be swept up into the group. When I merged into the group in the dark I was surprised that it wasn't larger (I had no idea it has splintered earlier). It took a while for my physiology to adjust to the faster effort but as my heart rate and breathing settled down to what is normal for this sort of thing I was starting to wonder why there seemed to be such a sense of urgency up at the front. Of course it was because there was, somewhere behind us, another group that was presumably chasing. After we made the final loop around the Elysian Fields circle I finally got a glimpse of the other group. Anyway, that turned out to be a pretty good workout. 

Thursday's weather was better with a temperature in the mid-50s and not nearly as much wind. I'd brought a couple of patched tubes along to give to Dan or whoever needed them. We ended up using both of the patched tubes I'd brought along, so I guess that was good. Little did I know I'd be returning home with two more tubes, both with holes in them! At least we got in the full Thursday ride, even though we were a good fifteen minutes late getting back.

Friday morning I was headed north with a serious 15 mph south tailwind to meet the Friendly Friday ride when I suddenly heard the rear tire explode. The tire had a clean slash all the way across the tread, and I could feel something inside. That turned out to be half of an old box-cutter blade. The tube was almost sliced in half. So on the side of Carrollton Avenue in the dark I scanned the gutter and found a discarded cigarette box that I used as a boot. MacGyver would have been proud.

Slashed!

I put a new tube in and inflated the tire and it looked like the boot would hold. I'd already missed the group, but I decided to ride easy out to Lakeshore Drive and pick the group up on its way back. After all, I still had another tube and two CO2 cartridges, so I wasn't too likely to get stranded and have to call for emergency extraction. I waited and waited but never saw the group, and finally turned back to ride home. As I later learned, only Charles had shown up for the ride that morning, and he'd turned off of Lakeshore Drive early, at Wisner, so I even missed him. At least I made it back home with air still in the tire.

Chris lines up for the D race as race director Tim Molyneaux checks out the field.

There was a collegiate/USAC race on Saturday up near Atlanta, put on by Georgia Tech. I'd been thinking earlier that I might skip that one since there was a race in Hattiesburg the following week. At the last minute, though, I decided to go ahead and drive up with Christopher, Julia, and Dustin in one of the larger Tulane vans in order to help with the driving duties and get in a 50-mile Masters road race. We didn't leave until I guess 1:30 or so, and therefore didn't arrive at the hotel near the road course until pretty late, but otherwise everything went smoothly and we were up early the next morning, arriving at the course around 7 am for Christopher's 8:00 Category D race. The lollipop course was on a short but silky smooth loop with only a couple of troublesome climbs, so the only thing I was worried about was the cold temperature's effect on my lungs and the moderate crosswind on the outbound segment. Christopher's race took off more or less on time, so I had plenty of time to contemplate wardrobe options. The temperature didn't look like it was going to increase a whole lot because of the overcast sky, so I rolled up to the line with knee-warmers and a long-sleeve base layer under regular arm-warmers. I had just enough time to see Christopher roll across the line alone but in 3rd place before my race started.

Emily Barrera photo. GW, the Rouleur guy, and me

The 40+/50+ Masters field was pretty big for this kind of thing, with 28 riders, 17 of whom were 50+, which was surprising. The lollipop course featured a short loop of about five miles with just a couple of short but significant climbs. The entire course was nearly perfect smooth asphalt, which made it feel quite fast. 

Julia's Category A race started just behind the Masters, and she would end up finishing 8th in the field of 18.

The race started out with a fairly strong crosswind coming from the left and of course the riders up in front were immediately pushing the pace. I spent that whole segment on the white line scrapping for a little draft and closing gaps. The average speed along that stretch was something over 28 mph. Of course I knew better than to be at the back, but I was suffering from a serious lack of confidence and was just hoping things would settle down. Well, they did settle down -- until we hit that crosswind stretch again. This time the speed surged into the 30s and soon enough gaps started opening up ahead of me as riders began to blow. I closed a couple of gaps but the last one was too long and too late. I ended up getting together with three other riders and we started a rather nice paceline rotation. One of these guys was a tall Rouleur who was taking longer pulls than the rest of us. I spent a lot of time on his wheel in the paceline. The other was GW from Auburn who is another road dinosaur like me. A couple of laps later we lost one of the riders but it didn't really affect our speed. Eventually we started seeing a group of riders up the road that turned out to be another group that had gotten shelled. After chasing pretty hard for another lap we caught that group about halfway through the last lap. That made for a group of seven that was, of course, mostly 50+ riders. We were still the back half of the race, a good five hopeless minutes off the pace of the front group, but at least I'd get to sprint, even if it was just for something like 16th place. It would probably be the first legitimate sprint in an actual race in two years. After the left turn taking us onto the final mile or so before the finish one rider rolled off the front. I knew I shouldn't but I went ahead and closed that gap anyway since, honestly, the real race was already in the parking lot. So I'm sitting there second wheel with a kilometer to go and the guy starts to blow up, at which point, quite predictably, I get streamed on the left by most of the rest as the drag race to the finish line starts. I managed to get into the back of that line and launched a reasonable sprint from an entirely unreasonable position, finishing 3rd in our off-the-back group for an unimpressive 9th place in the 50+. 

Yeah, that's broken.

As soon as I got back I found out from Dustin, who was about to line up for his race, that Christopher had actually crashed on the final turn in his Category D race when his chain somehow slipped, and had finished with wat turned out to be a broken collarbone. By the time I finished he had already gotten a ride to the nearby hospital. Then a little while later we were surprised to find Dustin riding back to the van after dropping out of the big Cat. 1/2/3 field. At least that allowed us to pick Chris up from the emergency room. Since he wasn't feeling too terrible we decided to go ahead with our original plan for Sunday which was to drive over to Oxford, Alabama for a quick ride up to the top of Cheaha Mountain.

Observation tower

The next morning we dropped Chris off at a Starbucks in Oxford and went over to the Choccolocco Sports Park to start our ride. The temperature was still quite cold (it had been 34° earlier that morning) but the sun was out and I think we all under-estimated how quickly we would warm up when the climbing started and over-dressed a bit. As we started the climbing someone remarked, "three sprinters walk into a bar..." in reference to the fact that none of us was what you'd call a climber but all of us might qualify as sprinters that, as everyone knows, suffer on the climbs. That ride went pretty nicely despite my somewhat sore legs. Since I should really have been taking a rest day considering the prior day's unfamiliar intensity, I decided to keep my effort level under control. That meant spending a fair amount of time in my lowest gear at 6-7 mph, which still required some significant wattage, but not so much that I was ever redlined. It was kind of nice to be able to actually look at some of the scenery during the climb. I've done Six Gap over ten times and hardly ever see much of the scenery. The Cheaha climb itself is broken up by a few easier and even downhill segments, and I'd guess that the grade is mostly in the 6% range, so it didn't seem nearly as difficult as the longer Six Gap climbs. Our whole ride out and back was only 35 miles, albeit with over 4,000 feet of climbing.

We went up the observation tower at the top, took a couple of photos, and then hit the downhill. The earlier sections of steep downhill felt pretty sketchy because of a fairly gusty wind that was blowing my aero front wheel around a bit, so I used a whole lot more brake than normal. Later on, though, we must have had more wind protection, or been going in a different relative direction, so it was easier to just let it fly. I think Dustin hit around 53 mph while I hit just 50 ... coasting. It was fun and the road surface was practically perfect, so other that that crosswind at the time it felt pretty good.

The drive back went really smoothly and we arrived back in town around 6:30 pm. I went out to the Mellow Monday ride this morning and was happy to find that my legs felt fine despite the fact that the weekend featured, for me, some of the highest intensity of the year so far.